Aphasic patients are patients who have lost the ability to understand and produce language due to brain damage. Aphasia can be produced, for example, by stroke. In chronic severely aphasic patients, the patient is permanently unable to read, write, speak or understand language-based communications. In addition, such aphasic patients are unable to learn to use keyboards or other language-based communication techniques, such as finger-spelling, sign language, or Morse code, to communicate. Thus, existing methods to communicate with such aphasic patients have proven to be profoundly limited.
In the prior art, it was recognized that severely aphasic patients could utilize a computer generating an icon-based language-oriented alternative communication system. These prior art methods have relied upon the basic principle of flash cards, utilizing the power of a microcomputer to implement them and then to begin to extend them to take initial advantage of the new medium of the computer. Thus, see for example, "Computer-Based Visual Communication in Aphasia" by Richard D. Steele, Michael Weinrich, Robert T. Wertz, Maria K. Kleczewska, and Gloria S. Carson, in Neuropsychologia, Vol. 27, pages 409-426 (1989). In that article, a C-VIC system for Computer-aided Visual Communication was reported. See also "A Method of Communicating with a Language Deficient Patient", by Richard D. Steele, Michael Weinrich, Young Harvill, and Maria K. Kleczewska, Ser. No. 07/530,735, filed May 30, 1990.
Other prior art includes: "Recipe Preparation by a Severely Impaired Aphasic Using the C-VlC 2.0 Interface", by Richard D. Steele, Michael Weinrich, and Gloria S. Carlson, in RESNA'89: Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies, Resna Press, pages 218-219 (1989); "Evaluating Performance of Severely Aphasic Patients on a Computer-Aided Visual Communication System", by Richard D. Steele, Gloria S. Carlson, Michael Weinrich, Maria K. Kleczewska, and Robert T. Wertz, in Clinical Aphasiology, BRK Publishers, Minneapolis, Minn., pages 46-54 (1987); "Processing of Visual Syntax in a Globally Aphasic Patient" by Michael Weinrich, Richard D. Steele, Gloria S. Carlson, Maria K. Kleczewska, Robert T. Wertz and Errol Baker, in Brain and Language, Vol. 36, pages 391-405 (1989); "Representations of `Verbs` in a Computerized Visual Communication System" by Michael Weinrich, Richard D. Steele, Maria K. Kleczewska, Gloria S. Carlson, Errol Baker and Robert T. Wertz, in Aphasiology, Vol. 3, pages 501-512 (1989).